BOONE—Climate scientist Michael E. Mann will speak March 21 at Appalachian State University. His address is a collaboration of the 24th anniversary of Appalachian’s Morgan Lecture Series in the Sciences, and cosponsored by the College of Arts and Sciences and the University Forum Series.

Mann’s talk, “The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars,” begins at 7 p.m. in Plemmons Student Union’s Blue Ridge Ballroom. The talk is free and the public is invited. Parking is available in the campus parking decks after 5:30 p.m.

Mann is a distinguished professor of meteorology and director of the Earth System Science Center at Penn State. He is the author of the books “Dire Predictions: Understanding Global Warming,” published in 2008, and “The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars: Dispatches from the Front Lines,” published in 2012.

Mann is known for making climate science accessible to the layperson. Of Mann’s book “Dire Predictions,” environmentalist Bill McKibben said, “Here’s a powerful, straight-forward guide to how scientists, economists and engineers really understand the problem of global warming. It makes 20 years of research and consensus-building completely accessible to anyone who cares to know the truth – and to do something about it.”

Of “The Hockey Stick,” biologist Paul R. Ehrlich said, “The brilliant and courageous climatologist Michael Mann knows what it’s like to be viciously attacked by the well-funded deniers of scientific evidence and how critical it is to respond. In this gripping, personal, front-lines account of climate politics, Mann tells the ‘hockey stick’ story, exposing the forces behind the denialist rhetoric, refuting the charges of disinformation campaigns, and eloquently conveying the importance of both doing great science and communicating its societal implications to a wider public.”

The Morgan Lecture Series in the Sciences was created by an endowment from the G. William Morgan Family. Morgan was a 1934 graduate of Appalachian and a health physicist with the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission. The lecture series helps stimulate scientific understanding and research among the sciences by bringing significant researchers to the Appalachian campus.

Previous speakers include evolutionary biologist Stephen J. Gould, population ecologist Paul Ehrlich, former U.S. Secretary of Energy Steven Chu and oceanographer and underwater archaeologist Robert Ballard.